April 2012

March 2012

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Update: The live stream is over. Thanks to everyone who joined the fun! If you missed it, you can watch the archive on Twitch.tv.

Update 2: The archive is now also available on YouTube. Additionally, we've posted a cable management video which is linked below.

Join us on Twitch, Thursday, March 23 at 2PM CDT for our next live build. Asus sent us their latest X370 motherboard and two STRIX RX 480s to help us put together an AMD Ryzen system using the top of the line R7 CPU.

We'll be building in the new BitFenix Shogun case. We also picked up the new TridentZ RGB memory from G.Skill, which when combined with Asus Aura support on the motherboard, GPUs, and case will give us complete synchronized control of the lighting across the entire system.

A big thanks to Asus for providing the motherboard and video cards to help make this build possible.

But when you see the Aura/RGB LED glow around the SSD mounts it's tough to not add 2 SSDs to this case.. That said, you could probably put something less expensive in there. Those are drives we use for video editing so we had them on hand. :)

We were looking to build with a newer drive that had a decent price/performance to align with the build -- and that reasonably matched our aesthetics. (Though ultimately, the drive ends up hidden with dual GPUs, so that became less a factor as the build evolved.)

The 950 PROs were drives we had on hand for other purposes so we added them to showcase the SSD mount to complete the look of the build. They definitely break the budget concept otherwise present in the part list, but we wanted to show off the case as fully as we could given the Aura/RGB tech present throughout the system.

They are two different sized radiators (240mm vs 280mm) with different tube layouts (top of the CPU block versus side), so it kind of depends on the rest of your part selection. I'd recommend posting the rest of your part list in our Part List Opinions Wanted forum to request some feedback specific to your current build plan.